India's Lost Legacy: A Party in Ruins

By BARBARA CROSSETTE, Special to The New York Times

Published: March 2, 1990

NEW DELHI, March 1—
The rout of Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Party in state elections this week, after its loss of power at the national level in November, imperils the future of India's oldest political organization, the movement that led the country to independence in 1947 and has dominated national politics ever since.

''What we are seeing is the irreversible process of disintegration of the Congress Party,'' S. Nihal Singh, one of India's leading political columnists, said in an interview today.

The view from within the party, which had been the democratic world's largest political organization, operating in a country of half a billion voters, was often no less bleak.

''We must put our house in order,'' Vasant Sathe, a widely respected former Congress Party minister said on national television tonight, adding that a restructuring of the party and the holding of elections for a new leadership were urgent priorities.

No Word From Gandhi

Mr. Gandhi has all but disappeared from sight over the last 48 hours, making no public statements on his party's debacle.

Congress politicians, faced with the deepest sustained plunge in popular support that the party has ever experienced, stop short of criticizing Mr. Gandhi personally. But independent analysts say bluntly that as party leader since 1984, the personal and political heir of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has failed both in power and in opposition to stop the plunge in support and salvage respect for Congress.

When the party last suffered ignominous defeat in 1977, in the aftermath of the period of emergency rule imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Mr. Gandhi's mother, it was able to exert its influence in opposition, and ultimately to come back stronger two years later when Mrs. Gandhi was returned to power. In 1990, no one seems to hold out such hopes.

The Congress crisis did not begin last year nor even in 1984, when Mr. Gandhi, a political neophyte who had spent most of his working life as an airline pilot, picked up the family mantle on the assassination of his mother. The origins of its decline, some political analysts said here today, go back at least two decades. They described how an Indian electorate once galvanized by the Congress Party's leadership on independence was becoming increasingly diverse and seeking political expression of differing regional, professional, caste and, at times, religious interests.

Revolt Against 'Congress Culture'

''The vote was a deep revolt against what we call the Congress culture: the cult of personality, the corruption, the total disregard for public propriety,'' said Bharat Wariavwalla of Delhi's Center for the Study of Developing Societies.

India's more mature and demanding voters, he said, were attracted by Prime Minister V. P. Singh's reputation for integrity or the Bharatiya Janata Party's politically principled stand, if not its pro-Hindu bias.

In voting Tuesday, the Congress Party lost control of government in six states - Orissa, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and apparently Bihar, where votes are still being counted - as well as in the small territory of Pondicherry.

The losses were tempered somewhat today by a strong showing in Maharashtra, where Congress was leading as results of state assembly polls Tuesday were tabulated, and may be able to retain power. But Maharastra and its capital, Bombay, harbor some of Mr. Gandhi's most outspoken party critics. Their success could strengthen them in the inevitable party debates ahead.

Mr. Nihal Singh, who is not related to the Prime Minister, said that the Congress Party's slide from the glory of its early days had begun in 1969 when Mrs. Gandhi first split the organization to insure that its leadership would stay loyal to her.

During Mrs. Gandhi's tenure in office, from 1965 to 1977, and 1980 to 1984, the party was losing its roots in the masses and its attraction to people of all regions, beliefs and classes or castes, Mr. Singh said.

Leader of Independence

The party, founded in 1885, led India's movement for independence from Britain through the first half of this century. Mohandas K. Gandhi, who symbolized the nonviolent struggle for freedom, had misgivings about turning the movement into a political party. When he died in 1948, shot by an assassin, Congress led the government under Prime Minister Nehru, a powerful figure who became the founding father to both the Indian Government and its long-ruling dynasty.

''Over the years, the roots of the party became starved,'' Mr. Singh said. ''It became more and more a party of wheeler-dealers.''

Furthermore, the wheeling and dealing was being done less in small power centers all over India and more in New Delhi, where successive Congress leaders held court, surrounded by party loyalists. In an organization that once took pride in its democratic procedures and its organization of patronage from the grassroots up, many party workers were alienated by the imperious leadership style of Mrs. Gandhi and her sons - first Sanjay, her closest adviser, who died in an air crash in 1980, and then Rajiv.

Neglect of the Party

Local party leaders or state government heads, among them cunning and canny bosses, were replaced by the Gandhis, often without consultation. The parliamentary party - the loose organization of Congress members of the national legislature - was neglected by Mrs. Gandhi and her sucessor, Rajiv, say politicians from inside and outside that caucus.

The contrast to Mr. Nehru, Mrs. Gandhi's father, was often stark. Mr. Nehru loved Parliament and devoted much of his time to it, becoming an accomplished debator. known for his intellect and wit.

In the administrations of his daughter and grandson, unelected advisers took the place of seasoned party men and women who had maintained close and constant touch with local party branches. So deep had the resentment gone that in elections last November and this week, many local Congress chapters balked at putting up posters of Rajiv Gandhi.

As Congress was changing under Mrs. Gandhi and her son, so was India. With better communications, more mobility and a wider choice of jobs open to young people - even if only a minority in a poor, overcrowded country - the unbridled power of patronage of local political leaders began to look less benign, and often was.

On many issues, political analysts fault Mr. Gandhi's political acumen, which they compare unfavorably with his mother's sharp political instincts. Those instincts helped Mrs. Gandhi survive a period out of power in 1977-79, and come back resoundingly in 1980.

In three months as leader of the opposition, Mr. Gandhi has failed every test, Mr. Wariavwalla said. He has refused to remove advisers who had led the party to defeat in November or to offer voters anything more substantial than ''cheap jingoism'' in campaign attacks on Mr. Singh.

''He is still an airline pilot surrounded by a lot of old friends, '' Mar. Wariavwalla said. ''He has failed to grow.''